


Kiss Me, Pin Me to the Wall

by hoteldestiel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25436143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoteldestiel/pseuds/hoteldestiel
Summary: Quentin Coldwater did not escape the clutches of the "specialist" after his ill-fated first foray with battle magic. Back in Brooklyn, there's a nagging feeling he can't quite shake, like a lucid dream he's still half-in. Good thing Jane Chatwin's got an ace up her sleeve, and Eliot Waugh does not go back on his promises.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Kiss Me, Pin Me to the Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheLucindaC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLucindaC/gifts).



> The first chapter of what was going to be a oneshot and how has like a whole ass plot - a season 1 AU where Quentin got his memory wiped after his run-in with Penny.

This didn't make sense. He was sitting in a cafe in Brooklyn, thinking about a magical university in Upstate New York that he'd never been to even though he had _definitely_ been there. It didn't. Make. Sense. There was no raised, slowly-healing, oozing scar on his arm like the one Julia had shown him when he and - wait, no. That wasn't....real? It wasn't real, because _magic_ wasn't real. Right? 

The waitress dropped off his cappuccino, bone-dry with extra foam and a double-shot of espresso and Quentin barely looked up, nodding a thanks instead of speaking it. He pulled the mug close, staring into the foam obstinately like if he looked at the condensing white bubbles long enough they might clear up the muddled mess in his head, might re-draw the line between reality and fantasy for him because he seemed to have lost the ability to do so himself. 

He passed the small, pale yellow ceramic handle back and forth between his hands, trying to pinpoint the last thing he _could_ remember clearly. He didn't... _quite_ ...remember walking through the door to this cafe. He didn't.... _exactly._ ...remember ordering the cappuccino. The last thing he remembered, _maybe_ , was a tall, handsome man with insanely well groomed curls and a posh red-and-navy sweater telling him not to be the old him. But the only tall, handsome man with well-groomed dark hair he knew was James, and James didn't _have_ curly hair. And what did that mean, anyway? Don't be the old him? That wasn't the kind of advice James would give. James was more of a "live fast, but you won't die young because your father's health insurance is far too comprehensive for that" kind of guy. Existential crises didn't hit guys like James. And while his pedigree suggested otherwise, Quentin had never seen James wear a cardigan in the three years he'd known him. 

He tried to fixate on the cup between his hands, the matching saucer below it, shifted his eyes to the dark mahogany of the too-expensive reclaimed-wood table next to the ceiling-to-floor window he'd apparently sat himself at. 

_You don't see color and want to go back to black and white._

His own voice rang in his ears as clear as day. But he couldn't place the conversation. He couldn't stitch together where those words had come from and who he'd directed them at. It wasn't familiar, even as he could hear the disdain, the buried fear in his voice. It felt like a memory more than a dream, but he didn't have a lick of context to weigh it against. 

Eventually, he finished his coffee and slung the familiar woven strap of his well-loved, tan canvas messenger bag over his shoulder before taking to the streets of his hometown again. After a few blocks of chilled, fall New York air and no sudden revelations, he pulled out his phone, tucking a slack curtain of light brown hair behind his ears as he swiped left and tapped into his Reminders app. 

_Make appointment about new meds,_ he tapped quickly, and when he hit enter, wondering absently when the hell he'd be able to get into his doctor's office again, he heard something else. 

_I bond fast._

Quentin shook his head, tucking his phone back into his pocket and glancing around to pair the dulcet tones of the voice in his head with anyone walking around him. Nothing. 

_Time is an illusion._

"Eliot?" 

He said it before he knew what was happening and then, stopped in his tracks, leaning against the rough, deep red brick corner of the brewery half a mile away from Julia's apartment. Eliot? He didn't....know an Eliot. 

Did he? 

No. No Eliots. An Elias, once, in elementary school. But that kid ate glue and occasionally attached himself to the teacher's leg and refused to let go until the principal called his mother. Elias would never had said something like, _I bond fast. Time is an illusion._

Maybe....maybe he needed a beer. 

Quentin pushed open the door to the brewery, ignoring the caffeine buzzing in his veins and the fact that he couldn't recall the last time he had a real meal. He couldn't recall much of anything prior to an hour and a half ago. Probably. He was pretty sure. 

Settling in at the bar, he ducked under the strap of his messenger bag and let it droop to the floor beside his tall, industrial-metal stool. He ordered a malty red Irish Ale and pulled a thick, manila folder from his bag. 

_Fillory and Further, Book 6._

Book 6....

The bartender slid a full glass of beer in front of him and it hit his hand, sloshing a little liquid over the edge. The cold beer hit his hand and -- 

Suddenly he was somewhere else, bolting up in a cold sweat, sheets and a comforter thrown over him. He was fully dressed, freshly-polished dress shoes the only piece of clothing laying neatly at the foot of a twin bed he was certain he'd never slept in before. The outfit he recognized - he’d worn it a few days ago to what was supposed to be his Yale grad school interview. But that interview had never happened. 

Quentin reached up to adjust the navy and red striped tie from that outfit. It wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t there. He glanced down at his shirt. A dark red-and-blue-checkered button-up, no tie. A dark grey t-shirt underneath. A weekend outfit, the kind of thing he wore if he was spending the weekend in an intensive DnD campaign, or trying to beat his record start-to-finish time in the latest Mario adventure. The kind of thing he wore to therapy or a first date (one in the same on the frustration scale), but not a Yale grad school interview outfit. Not what he remembered wearing when he got the envelope sitting in front of him now, not what he was wearing when he woke up in what had to have been a dorm room except that he hadn’t been on any campuses lately. Right? 

He spent the time it took him to drink that beer tapping his fingers against the manila envelope, flipping it over, pinching the silver fasten at the back together like he was going to open it, bending them back down to lay flat before he ever actually did. His skin itched under the surface, a crawling sort of scratch that felt like he'd been infiltrated with a foreign body. Something that he wasn't supposed to notice, but it was like whoever put it there messed up. Because he couldn't _not_ notice it. It was buzzing there, unrelenting, taunting him. 

When he finished the beer, he stuffed the envelope back into his bag and left cash on the table, the buzzing underneath his skin unbearable. He needed to figure this out, and a hipster brewery in Brooklyn was just - not the place to do it. He hopped on the subway and got off near a swanky bar on the Upper East Side. It was far from his usual choice of nightly entertainment, but that was the whole point. Whenever he really needed to focus, he went somewhere everyday Quentin Coldwater would never go. Shaking it up and pretending to be anything but himself had saved him from winding up on the rooftop of the old post office on 58th more times than he cared to admit. 

He found a dark booth in the corner, ordered a vodka Redbull, and pulled out the manila envelope again. There was no book 6. Quentin had always wished there had been - the 5th installment left so many loose ends to be tied up and while he was more than happy to wax philosophical about his theories to Julia for hours on end, finite answers would have made it much easier for him to, maybe, just, relate to Fillory like a normal person. Instead, the series felt like a mystery unraveled, just like this goddamn humming underneath his skin. Steeling himself with a stinging gulp of his drink, he flipped over the envelope and in a clumsy, rushed movement, pinched the silver prongs and lifted the flap, pulling out the thick stack of paper inside. 

It was halfway out of the envelope when the buzzing stopped, a rush of 48 hours flooding back to his consciousness. Ember and Umber's clock to Fillory in his Yale interview's house. His Yale interviewer dead. Chasing a sheet of paper through a half-open gate and into - Brakebills. Eliot - Eliot Waugh, the upperclassman who'd escorted him to the test. Passing the test. Julia _not_ passing the test. Margo. Alice. Dean Fogg yelling at him - the deck of cards freezing in _midfuckingair._ Penny. Battle magic. All of it, hitting him so hard he knocked the rest of his drink over as his hands flailed, gripping for the edge of the table.

As he was pulling himself back to - reality? Was that even a thing at this point? - he saw the server heading his way with a towel in hand. Normally, he would be embarrassed. He might even try to make a run for it before he could get yelled at for spilling a drink in a place with fancy blue and purple uplights and luxe leather tufted sofa booths like this. But he barely even registered the server asking if he was okay, barely managed to nod that yes, he would take another drink, because. Because. _Because._

_Magic was real._

Magic was real?! 

He pulled the manuscript all the way out of the envelope, flipping it over. On the top sheet was a note scrawled in loopy, elegant handwriting. 

_Quentin,_

_Yes, it's real. Find a way back into Brakebills._

_This isn't over._

_Kindest regards,_

_Eliza._

Quentin had no idea who this Eliza woman was, but his very limited experience with her left the impression that she was an incredibly powerful magician. He had no interest in landing on her bad side and was grateful that for whatever reason it seemed like he'd done the opposite. And Brakebills. God, how was he supposed to get back into Brakebills when he wasn't even sure how'd he managed to get there in the first place? 

None of the pages were mysteriously floating away this time, no carefully crafted geo-locator magic leading him to some untraceable place in "upstate New York." That's what Eliot had said. Upstate New York. Quentin didn't know how much truth there was to that, but it was a starting point. Better than nothing, right? 

The server returned with a new drink and Quentin pretended not to notice how she set it much closer to the middle of the table than his last. Sheepishly he nodded his thanks before pulling out his phone, taking a long swig through the two tiny plastic straws, and zooming in on a map of Upstate New York, looking for anything unusual. 

At least three - maybe four? He was paying far less attention to the coming and going of empty and full glasses than he was to the errant scribblings he'd jotted down on the back of Eliza's note - drinks later, Quentin was feeling pleasantly buzzed and extraordinarily awake, but no closer to getting himself back into Brakebills. He knew Alice had used an alumni key, but he decidedly did not have access to an alumni key. That was as far as his knowledge went. He hadn't found any large expanses of green space in Upstate New York that were unaccounted for, couldn't even pinpoint a glitch in the map that might indicate some strange dimensional _something_ going on. He'd barely been at Brakebills for half a semester, he wasn't exactly well-versed enough in wards and protection spells to know what, exactly, to look for. 

By the time his next empty glass was replaced with a full one, things felt barely above hopeless. Eliza could put all the memories they'd tried to take back in his head, but couldn't _also_ supply him with a hint on how the fuck to get back to Brakebills? Seriously? Maybe he wasn't actually on her good side after all. This was way worse, right? Worse than not knowing. KNOWING, and not having a fucking clue what to do about it? Worse. Definitely, absolutely worse. 

Frustrated, he huffed and let his head fall into the crook created by his arms on the table. 

"Sorry to intrude on whatever moment-slash-nap you're indulging in, but my feet are killing me from killing it on the dancefloor, and all the other tables are full. Mind if I grab a seat?"


End file.
